AUTISM INCLUSION TEACHER

✨Happy Autism Understanding/ Acceptance/ Awareness Day… ✨

Here’s some of the posts we’ve shared over the last week and a bit on our socials… ❤️❤️❤️

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Times are changing 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 

I hope we eventually get to a point that because ‘we all know better, we do better’ and we treat each and EVERY person with respect… ❤️ by learning about each other’s uniqueness, including communication styles , and truly valuing diversity of neuro-types, we’re moving towards an inclusive society…

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From Peter Malinauskas

SA is leading the way with many firsts when it comes to supporting the autistic and autism communities including: 

✅ Appointed the first Assistant Minister for Autism

✅ Established the first Office for Autism, led by an autistic director 

✅Created the largest network of Autism Inclusion Teachers in our public primary schools

✅ New autism assessment pilot for schools

✅ Consulted on the state's first Autism Strategy due to be launched later this year

✅ Appointed autistic South Australians to the state's first Autism Strategy Advisory Committee and Autism Education Advisory Group

✅ Rolling out an Autism Charter across state government 

✅ Brought our universities together to boost disability and inclusion studies in SA teaching degrees

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Over the last year and a bit that I’ve been in the AIT role I’ve felt that people think it’s just for the Autistic and neurodivergent young people and their families… 

     ✨✨BUT this isn’t the case…✨✨ 

my role is to support everyone- the more knowledge we all have, the more insight and understanding we can have… 

Em, from NeuroWild, is an amazing individual (she’s neurodivergent herself, has 2 neurodivergent children, and is a speech pathologist)- her work is amazing… ❤️❤️ 

I hope you all love her post on understanding Autism … (link below)

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/h8C1xxpmqr93AW2U/?mibextid=WC7FNe

This year our Interoception Room has undergone a makeover… ❤️ this was initiated by some of our amazing staff as they wanted to update it to suit our young people’s needs … 

Before photos—

Here’s one of our SSO’s, Jo giving a tour of the newly created space… it’s absolutely amazing. 👇🏻

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Environment has HUGE impact on regulation and in turn a young person’s ability to engage in learning. Our educators put a lot  of effort into not only making their spaces visually pleasing, but also meeting our students’ individual sensory needs and preferences.

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✨Personalised learning supports for our neurodivergent young people is a must ✨ 

This 3.5 minute clip (please click on the link below) captures our Junior Primary Small class teacher and shows how we are accommodating and normalising sensory supports within our learning spaces. It is fantastic that the students have a voice and are empowered to trial and see which sensory supports suit them ❤️❤️❤️

https://drive.google.com/file/d/154_FtK-vw6kl9vxIzG4FzPrvgC_BsO9l/view?usp=drivesdk

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Enjoy the holidays and I’ll see you all back next term.

Cass Humphrey

HEPS Autism Inclusion Teacher

Cassie.Humphrey574@schools.sa.edu.au